Olivia Manning

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OM began publishing shortly before the Second World War. She produced thirteen novels, as well as short stories and non-fiction including historical and topographical writing. Her best known works are her two highly praised trilogies of novels about Europe in the Second World War.
  • BirthName: Olivia Mary Manning
    She almost never used her second given name.

  • Nickname: Ollov
    This was her family nickname: necessary in a family unit consisting of two Olivers and two Olivias.

  • Married: Smith
  • Pseudonyms: Jacob Morrow
    For this earliest pseudonym she chose the first name from Virginia Woolf 's Jacob's Room to put with her mother's birth name.
    Braybrooke, Neville, and Isobel English. Olivia Manning: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
    2
    ; O. M. Manning
    This was her next, compromise pseudonym, initials because of a prejudice against women writers at that time.
    qtd. in
    English, Isobel, and Olivia Manning. “Introduction”. The Wind Changes, Virago, 1988, p. v - xvi.
    vii

Milestones

2 March 1908

OM was born at her parents' home, 134 Laburnam Grove in Portsmouth, Hampshire, the elder of two children.
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Braybrooke, Neville, and Isobel English. Olivia Manning: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
2

18 May 1928

OM made her first appearance in print, aged twenty, with a letter to the editor of the local paper explaining the subject-matter of her painting A Study in Tempera, which had been chosen for the local exhibition on the pier.
Braybrooke, Neville, and Isobel English. Olivia Manning: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
31

23 July 1980

OM died at the Royal County Hospital at Ryde, Isle of Wight, of the after-effects of a stroke which she had suffered while on holiday.
English, Isobel, and Olivia Manning. “Introduction”. The Play Room, Virago, 1984, p. vii - xv.
xv

Late September 1980

OM 's Levant Trilogy was completed shortly after her death with the appearance of The Sum of Things, the final novel both of the trilogy and of her life.
David, Deirdre. Olivia Manning: A Woman at War. Oxford University Press, 2012.
381
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

Biography

Birth and Family

2 March 1908

OM was born at her parents' home, 134 Laburnam Grove in Portsmouth, Hampshire, the elder of two children.
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Braybrooke, Neville, and Isobel English. Olivia Manning: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 2004.
2

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